This introduction attempts to draw from the immense store of words, terms, concepts, idioms, and ideas of the Iraqi regime. The readers are asked to discern the political culture and follow the ...
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This introduction attempts to draw from the immense store of words, terms, concepts, idioms, and ideas of the Iraqi regime. The readers are asked to discern the political culture and follow the political processes evolving in society. Furthermore, the chapter points out the power and importance of language expressing the primordial quality of words. The myth of the Arabic language and its use in politics are also discussed. The chapter looks at the media and its co-relation with Arab politics. Saddam Husayn is introduced as a leader and as the strongman behind the scenes. The spheres of the study are also explained in this chapter.Less

Introduction: Language and Politics

Ofra Bengio

Published in print: 1998-04-30

This introduction attempts to draw from the immense store of words, terms, concepts, idioms, and ideas of the Iraqi regime. The readers are asked to discern the political culture and follow the political processes evolving in society. Furthermore, the chapter points out the power and importance of language expressing the primordial quality of words. The myth of the Arabic language and its use in politics are also discussed. The chapter looks at the media and its co-relation with Arab politics. Saddam Husayn is introduced as a leader and as the strongman behind the scenes. The spheres of the study are also explained in this chapter.

This book attempts to understand modern Iraq through a close examination of the political discourse used by the Baʿth regime and its leader, Saddam Hussein. By analysing political terms, concepts, ...
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This book attempts to understand modern Iraq through a close examination of the political discourse used by the Baʿth regime and its leader, Saddam Hussein. By analysing political terms, concepts, and idioms as disseminated through the official Iraqi mouthpieces, the book illuminates Iraq's political culture and the events that these expressions have both reflected and shaped. Not only does this study hope to add to our understanding of the “Saddam enigma,” but it also hopes to offer a more universal truth: that under any regime or political culture is built on public discourse.Less

Saddam's Word : The Political Discourse in Iraq

Ofra Bengio

Published in print: 1998-04-30

This book attempts to understand modern Iraq through a close examination of the political discourse used by the Baʿth regime and its leader, Saddam Hussein. By analysing political terms, concepts, and idioms as disseminated through the official Iraqi mouthpieces, the book illuminates Iraq's political culture and the events that these expressions have both reflected and shaped. Not only does this study hope to add to our understanding of the “Saddam enigma,” but it also hopes to offer a more universal truth: that under any regime or political culture is built on public discourse.

Islam, it is often noted, has no concept of the legal person. Having culturally fractionated the self, Western polities can more readily ask whether an arbitrary age or ritual passage marks one as ...
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Islam, it is often noted, has no concept of the legal person. Having culturally fractionated the self, Western polities can more readily ask whether an arbitrary age or ritual passage marks one as capable of contracting, or whether a mental disease or defect renders one immune from liability for various harmful acts. In Islam, by contrast, the focus on relationships and consequences yields, most commonly, an emphasis on who people are in relation to others, rather than where they are in a set life structure, and what consequences have befallen others by their acts. Similarly, the idea of public space—in the sense of an area “owned” by everyone—is largely absent in the Arab polity. People feel no responsibility, for example, for public streets or sidewalks. In each instance, it is the personal (in the Arab sense of that term) that defines the situation, not the (rather unimaginable) construction of a legal person some of whose features can be divorced from others and fixed within an institutional frame.Less

Constructing Institutions in a Political Culture of Personalism

Published in print: 2003-01-01

Islam, it is often noted, has no concept of the legal person. Having culturally fractionated the self, Western polities can more readily ask whether an arbitrary age or ritual passage marks one as capable of contracting, or whether a mental disease or defect renders one immune from liability for various harmful acts. In Islam, by contrast, the focus on relationships and consequences yields, most commonly, an emphasis on who people are in relation to others, rather than where they are in a set life structure, and what consequences have befallen others by their acts. Similarly, the idea of public space—in the sense of an area “owned” by everyone—is largely absent in the Arab polity. People feel no responsibility, for example, for public streets or sidewalks. In each instance, it is the personal (in the Arab sense of that term) that defines the situation, not the (rather unimaginable) construction of a legal person some of whose features can be divorced from others and fixed within an institutional frame.